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NASA News

HOUSTON – Atlantis astronauts Steve Bowen and Michael Good changed out four of the six 375-pound batteries on the International Space Station’s port 6 truss during a 7-hour, 9-minute spacewalk Wednesday, getting a leg up on a major mission priority.

Plans called for three of the batteries to be replaced today, and mission managers hoped the fourth could be changed out. Remaining batteries are to be swapped during a Friday spacewalk by Good and Garrett Reisman.

The spacewalk, the fifth for Bowen and the third for Good, got under way at 5:38 a.m. CDT, more than 25 minutes ahead of the scheduled start that already had been moved up 30 minutes. One reason for the early scheduled start was the addition of a task to remove a cable snag in the orbiter boom sensor system’s pan and tilt mechanism. Bowen accomplished that task in less than 30 minutes, while Good began work with the batteries.

Atlantis Pilot Tony Antonelli was the intravehicular officer, providing guidance and advice to the spacewalkers. Mission Specialists Reisman and Piers Sellers operated the station’s Canadarm2. Spacewalkers took each battery from the cargo carrier held by the station arm, installed it in a space from which they had removed an old battery, then bolted the old battery into the cargo carrier for return to Earth.

The fourth old battery was stowed temporarily on the truss. It will be taken to the cargo carrier during the Friday spacewalk.

After the battery work and cleanup of the area, the spacewalkers moved on to the new backup Ku band antenna on the Z1 truss. They tightened bolts holding its dish to its boom, closing a gap left there after Monday’s spacewalk. They removed launch latches, leaving the antenna ready to operate.

That done, they cleaned up the area and returned to the Quest airlock. The spacewalk officially ended at 12:47 p.m., when Quest repressurization began.

Today’s spacewalk was the 145th for station assembly and maintenance. Those spacewalks total 908 hours, 7 minutes.

The next status report will be issued after crew wakeup or earlier if events warrant.